Pastor’s Corner: Showing Up

October 4, 2017

With apologies for the late posting of this column!

Movie director Woody Allen once observed that “Showing up is 80 percent of life.”

I think you can make a pretty good argument that showing up is 100 percent of ministry. To do that, I’m going to need your help, so that I can “show up” when it’s important, when it’s helpful, and when it’s needed. The simple truth is that I won’t be there if I don’t know where I should be.

Early in my career, hospitals and nursing homes regularly called pastors when admitting a new patient. Today, they do not – in fact, without your specific direction, they can’t legally give any information to anybody about you. I think this is a good thing, but it does make it more difficult to know when I should show up at the hospital.

If you’re in the hospital, and you’d like me to be there, please call. I will show up.

As we make our way through the world, seasons of the year and seasons of our lives bring changes. Some of them exult us, and some of them sadden us. We may have new family members, or new honors, or new jobs to celebrate; we may have deaths to mourn, or changed living circumstances to adapt to, or medical concerns to heal from.

If something is changing in your life for good or ill, and you’d like me to be there, please call. I will show up.

Sadly, there will be times when you can’t make the call yourself, or when the situation puts the thought right out of your mind. That’s all right. These things happen. You can ask someone else to make the call if you’re unable, or you can call when it occurs to you.

If something has happened and you’d like me to be there (even if you’d have preferred to have me there earlier), please call. I will show up.

I’ve never been able to successfully guess what is happening in people’s lives aside from talking with them. But I do answer the telephone pretty well. So please call.

I will show up.

Blessings,

Pastor Eric